It’s more than just viruses, and it’ll take more than simply asserting “the fall did it” to explain the amazing complexity of pathogens and their mechanisms of causing disease as well as avoiding the host immune system.
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If I understand you correctly, this begs the question of why god didn’t choose a “reality path” for creation that didn’t include the fall at all. This is what I was talking about earlier.
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Why would it take more than that?
Is that a serious question? Are you also going to ask why simply saying “god did it” isn’t a satisfactory answer to any question about natural history?
God works in mysterious ways. 
In all seriousness, your objection here is just a reiteration of the more general problem of evil, and there are lots of responses to that which can be found. I think William Lane Craig’s website has a couple of good videos that summarize the issue. (Homepage of reasonablefaith.org, “See our latest videos”, look for the two on suffering and evil.)
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Yeah, that’s what I asked. If God exists, then God can do stuff.
If you are going to appeal to a linked article, you must be prepare to get into the weeds to defend it. Hand waving away scientific and logical objections does not carry credibility.
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That doesn’t mean that simply saying “god exists” constitutes a good explanation.
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I didn’t say that. I appealed to what God himself told us in Scripture.
“The Bible is 100% true because the Bible says it is 100% true” is both completely circular and non scientific.
Welcome to the world of presupposition apologetics.
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I prompted you for an explanation and your answer was basically “god did it”. OK, you’ve told me what God told you in scripture, now offer an actual explanation, or admit that you can’t, and instead have to appeal to an inexplicable miracle.
It is.
And then you wonder why people don’t take YECs seriously on scientific matters.
It’s much more graceful and conducive to productive discussion if you avoid misrepresenting your inferences as others’ implications.
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I did. It is hilariously bad. There is, however, a bit of evidence cited! I presume that was Carter’s doing, not yours.
With that, you write:
“It was already known that, after the viral outbreak started, the mortality rates continually went down. What we showed was that this correlated with an increased load of mutations in the viral genomes.”
Well, yeah, evolutionary theory predicts that mortality rates should go down. Less mortality constitutes increased replication, and therefore means increased fitness, for a virus. That’s why small Ebola outbreaks can be contained so that they burn out. That can’t be done with any of the 50-100 viruses that cause the common cold.
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That’s not a scientific answer. But is a metaphysical answer.
Metaphysical issues are even harder to sort out than scientific ones, of course. If you want to explore the issue more, maybe a separate thread is in order.
Best,
Chris
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But not incredible that a YEC would say it.
@PDPrice used the word may in his speculation about free beings, so this is certainly a reasonable thought (and also a very popular thought.) For centuries many have assumed that a flesh-and-blood creature of our type—if truly possessing the power of choice—will eventually make a bad choice that constitutes a sinful choice.
When God is defined as one whose very being and ways are far above those of humans, this is a reasonable question but one which centuries of philosophers and theologians (including atheist ones) have agreed may be unanswerable. (Obviously, the fact that a question cannot be answered by humans does not mean that an answer does not exist or that it is associated with an illogical or impossible scenario.)
Many would say that God by definition is incredible, if the definition of incredible being used in that context is “extraordinary; difficult to believe”, then yes, I would agree with you that it is entirely reasonable to consider this scenario as seeming incredible to many people.
I agree. Moreover, lots of things which seem incredible are also true—although there are also lots of things which seem incredible which are not true.
I don’t think you are understanding me correctly. It is not begging the question (aka petitio principii), which is a type of circular reasoning, for several reasons including:
(1) Answering a question about proximate causation with a description of the ultimate causation is not truly a case of circular reasoning, especially when it moves the framing outside of the cause-and-effect physics of space-time into a whole 'nother sphere. (If God is truly outside of space-time because he created space-time and is not subject to it, it does not beg the question to assert that the reality described may indeed be the selected reality in a Molinistic point of view. To really explore this would require an entire exploratory thread on Molinism.)
(2) I actually do NOT believe that the Bible makes any such claim that there was no animal death or suffering before the fall. So in merely trying to present someone else viewpoint in the best possible light, I’m not sure that effort is best characterized by a begging the question informal logic fallacy.
(3) Also, I didn’t understand you as asking that question. I looked back in the thread a little but perhaps I simply missed it. Anyway, I wasn’t trying to answer why God chose that reality path for his creation.
No doubt, it is very possible that I’m doing a pour job of explaining this. (And I probably only even attempted an explanation because I’m enough of an persnickety ol’ codger so as to object to the way the original meaning of beginning the question has been superseded in modern English usage by broader applications of that term. Yet, I realize that one can’t stop language evolution when it is driven by sheer force of numbers in popular usage.)
Another thought in exploring the idea further:
Somebody asks, “Why are there no blue apples on these trees? Did the orchard owner go through and remove all of them one by one?”
Somebody answers, “No. There are no such things as blue apples in this orchard. In fact, purple apples don’t exist at all. Or at least, not yet.”
Rebuttal: “You are begging the question. I asked why there are no blue apples on these trees. You haven’t explained why the orchard owner removed the blue apples or didn’t want any blue apples in the orchard.”
===> Any case, @evograd, your comments and questions are certainly reasonable ones—and interesting ones.
PATHOGENS & THE FALL
For many reasons. And the question remains: Why assume that there were no such disease-causing pathogens before the fall [and where there no immune systems because they were unnecessary?] when (a) the Bible never makes such a claim about such general planet-wide conditions before the fall (EXCEPT to state that there was no human death before the fall in the garden of Eden), and (b) we have no scientific evidence from God’s creation to make such a claim.
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I wasn’t trying to say it was some kind of fallacy, I was just making the point that if God can choose a reality path includes no accidents that lead to injury or death in the Garden, an obvious follow up question is why he couldn’t have also chosen a reality path that involved Adam and Eve not sinning despite having free will.
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